Setting up the Brand portal in Elvis 5

It provides easy access to content that is stored in Elvis and because of its limited features it is perfect for general use.

Figure: The Brand portal.

This article describes how to set up the Brand portal so that users can start using it.

Installation and configuration

The Brand portal is part of Elvis Server and is therefore installed as part of the Elvis Server installation. No additional configuration steps are needed.

Network products and RFC compliancy

The Brand portal is run in a Web browser and references to assets and queries are therefore expressed in URLs. These URLs can contain ////-sequences and diacritics such as accented characters.

Please note that the URLs that are generated by Elvis are compliant with the URI syntax RFC 3986. Make sure that your network environment such as proxies, gateways and firewalls also support this standard so that the URLs can be successfully routed.

Required licenses

The Brand portal is mainly aimed at users with a Basic user license who only need to search, download and share assets, but is of course available to users with any of the other license types as well.

Setting up user permissions

As for any other Elvis client, users need to be given permission to use the Brand portal and its features. This is done by using the tools in the Desktop client as described in Controlling user permissions in Elvis 5.

For the Brand portal, take note of the following:

Use the Capability named 'Web client' to provide users access to the Brand portal.

When using folders as a navigation method in the Brand portal (see Setting up the navigation method), these folders appears as 'Categories': links that can be clicked. Because the folder name is used as the name of the Category, make sure that descriptive folder names are used as much as possible. Grant or deny folder access to each user or user group as needed so that only links appear to locations that the user is allowed access to.

Setting up the navigation method

The Brand portal can be set up to let users use one of the following ways of navigating the assets in Elvis:

By using Categories

By using taxonomies

Using Categories

Note: Using Categories is the default navigation method of the Brand portal.

In the Brand portal, Categories represent the folders in Elvis. Instead of showing a folder structure, the Categories and any sub Categories are shown as a list. When selecting a Category, the assets that are part of that folder in Elvis are shown.

Figure: Using Categories to navigate the assets in the Brand portal.

Using taxonomies

Info: This feature requires Elvis 5.23 or higher.

Using taxonomies is a way of adding metadata to an asset by choosing a value from a predefined list. This makes sure that:

The value is always correctly spelled when adding it to the asset or when searching for it

Users are made aware of the existence of the term by viewing the taxonomy list

When Elvis Server is set up to make use of taxonomies, these can be offered in the Brand portal as a way of letting users find assets. It then replaces the method of using Categories.

Note: The 'Tags' field is not supported for use as a taxonomy field in the Brand portal because it conflicts with the current filter options.

Taxonomies are shown as lists that can be expanded or collapsed from which the user can choose one or more values.

Step 2. Add the following option and add the name of each field (for which taxonomy is enabled) that needs to be shown. Separate multiple fields by a comma:

Defining which taxonomy fields to show

brandPortalNavigationTaxonomyFields=field1,field2,field3

Step 3. Save the file.

Changing the look and feel

The look and feel of the Brand portal can be changed to match the style of the brand that the Brand portal is used for, for example by matching it with the branding of a company, product or publication.

The following can be adjusted:

The background image of the Sign In page

The logo in the header

The color of the header

The highlight color (used for buttons, selections and various other small page items)

The metadata icons

The 'favicon' shown in a Web browser

The 'Feedback' and 'Help' links

Creating custom e-mail notifications for Shared Links

Figure: The default background image of the Sign In page.

Figure: A custom background image on the Sign In page.

Figure: The default Branding settings.

Figure: The Branding settings adjusted to match the WoodWing brand.

Changing the background of the Sign In page

Info: This feature requires Elvis 5.21 or higher.

Since Elvis 5.21, a background image is shown on the Sign In page. If needed, it can be replaced by a custom image.

Setting up download presets

By default, users can either download a preview of a file, download the original file, or they can create a custom download to download the file in a specific format, size and resolution.

Note: This applies to downloading files in the Brand portal itself as well as downloading files that are shared through the Brand portal.

To improve efficiency, Download Presets containing often used download settings can be made available to user groups and users of shared files. This way the users do not have to go through the process of creating a Custom Download each time themselves.

Each assigned Download Preset appears in the Download menu for that user.

Figure: Download Presets make it easy for users to quickly download files in a specific format, size and resolution.